Western U.S. national parks popular with foreign tourists | Visa

Western U.S. national parks popular with foreign tourists

January 04, 2019 – While the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was the most popular park for domestic travelers last summer (June-August), it ranks only 15th for foreign visitors. The Grand Canyon tops the list for foreign visitors.

Percent of total park visits by foreign tourists

Source: Visa Business and Economic Insights; VISIT database; Haver analytics, U.S. National Park Service Visitor Use Statistics

Five other national parks are within a six-hour drive from the Grand Canyon, making it very convenient for foreign visitors to see two or more parks within one visit. Last summer, 35 percent of foreign visitors to the Grand Canyon also visited another nearby park, according to Visa estimates. This option was most popular with European travelers, as at least 40 percent included a park in either California, Utah or Nevada in their trip.

The popularity of combining parks into a grand circuit likely contributed to the rising popularity of such parks as Arches and Bryce Canyon.

About VISIT Database

Visa International Travel (VISIT) database is a proprietary model that combines Visa's cardholder data with publicly available cross-border arrival statistics. The database provides a comprehensive view into high-frequency cross border travel flows, currently encompassing the top 82 origin and destination countries, which collectively account for more than 80 percent of global travel.

VISIT combines unique counts of Visa cardholders that register a face-to-face transaction at a merchant outside their home country in a given calendar month with other transaction data such as average spend per cardholder, card usage patterns at lodging merchants and others. Visa uses this data to econometrically model official arrival statistics compiled by various government sources and to generate estimates that fill in the large gaps existing in the cross-border travel data.